Renée and Menno's Garden

Welcome to our garden. Please come along for a walk and have a look around.

When we moved here there was a lawn on three sides of the house. We have quite a number of large trees both in our garden and in the surrounding community park and there was a lot of shade and huge amounts of moss and weed in the grass. We had long discussions as to whether we could decide that moss is green and it didn't bother us or whether we would just dump it full of concrete and paint it green. It was partly taken out of our hands by the huge storms of 5 years ago when a tremendous yewtree toppled and the light came in. We decided on a plan of action that took us several years to realize on the basis of a design by a good friend who is a garden- and landscapearchitect. She put down the main rules and off we went.
Click on most pictures to get a larger view.

A big triple birch is the first thing you see (we would like to cut it down because it gives so much shade and takes all the water it can get, but on the other hand it would be a shame to put the axe to such a beautiful eyecatcher and townhall would certainly not give us permission).
See how the ground is completely covered to keep the weeds at bay (well nearly).

 Clematis Montana grows up the front of the house

The Laburnum which you see at the top right of the picture above gives a splash of yellow early in the season as a flag at the beginning of the path. We have a prolonged flowering in this part of the garden, beacause for some strange reason the Laburnum standing next to ours but in the neighbours front garden, starts flowering about a fortnight before ours does so together they give us a longer period of yellow blooms.
Continuous groundcover of Dicentra, Geranium, Pachysandra and Bergenium leads further into the front garden
Follow the path to the left side of the house and................

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Garden gate